Having directed the Oscar-winning Selma in 2014, US director Ava DuVernay followed it up with the slightly less well-received fantasy film – and that’s putting it kindly - A Wrinkle in Time in 2018.

It’s clearly taken her a long time to get over that blip in her career, following it up as she now does , six years later, with a powerful story based on Isabel Wilkerson’s best-selling factual bestseller of 2020 Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.

Having not only published a book, but won a Pulitzer Prize for it, Isabel Wilkerson (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) is now changing her priorities, stepping back from writing to look after her ailing mother.

But when she’s out at an event with her husband Brett (Jon Bernthal), she’s approached by a friend, an editor, who has a story he wants her to write about, concerning a young black man killed in a white residential area. She tells him the situation, although intrigued, she has other things to deal with right now.

But after a number of tragedies in her life, Isabel finds herself drawn back to the death of the young man, but only sees it as the jumping off point into a theory that will take her around the world, regarding the link between racism and the Indian class system known as caste.

DuVernay’s latest is a truly thought-provoking piece of work, which looks at the author’s theory of interconnectedness between slavery in the US, the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany, and the Indian caste system. To say it’s an education is an understatement. On the surface at least, it feels a little far-fetched, but the further into her research she goes, the dots definitely start to join up.

In an attempt to stop it feeling less like an academic presentation, the director peppers it with personal stories, both from Abigail and her subjects, to make it easier for an audience to relate too, which lends itself to some much needed emotional resonance.

It’s the type of film in which you really need a clear head to go into it with, as there’s no getting around that it’s an academic theory after all. However, DuVernay does a great job in holding our hands, and breaking it down to make it fairly accessible on the whole, especially when all the pieces fall into place.

In truth it’s somewhat of a hybrid film – an edu-drama if you will – but with a strong performance from Ellis-Taylor, it makes for a fascinating lesson in social history.